Tricking the eye
Magic is in the air — but not because of the holiday season.
Logan is home to many magicians like Steven Viator and Richard Cannon, who recently placed in the Cache Valley Magic Competition, drawing contestants from as far away as Salt Lake City and Preston, Idaho.
Competing was a first for Viator, a junior at USU majoring in finance and economics who placed third, and Cannon, the 80-year-old, first-place winner who said he didn’t even plan on participating before he arrived.
“The club decided they were going to run this contest down at Legend’s, and you could come and watch the show for 10 bucks a person,” Cannon said. “I had a few tricks in my pocket, but I went there and fully intended to watch the show. I’m not very competitive.”
Richard Hatch, an organizer of the event, told Cannon he could receive the $10 back by competing in the event and Cannon agreed.
When he was announced the winner, Cannon said he was stunned.
“I found the other competitors’ other acts to be better than mine,” Cannon said. “I was pleased with my performance, but I didn’t think I was in the running for prize money.”
Cannon said he began when he was about 10 years old, but for some in the competition, 70 years of practice is a far-off destination.
“I’ve been doing (magic) unofficially for about three years, but I started doing shows and performing about a year ago,” Viator said. “It all started way back when my son actually got a magic kit for his birthday. He was too young to read the instructions, so I learned the tricks and taught him, and we put on a little magic show for the family. And then I just got hooked.”
He said for the first two years he mostly looked up new tricks in books or on the Internet. Viator said he’d like to start a club at USU for other students interested in magic.
“I need to find people who are interested in learning magic,” Viator said. “There’s not a large population that I know of (here at USU), but if we reach out to people, I think it could grow pretty significantly.”
Hatch lived elsewhere for awhile, and when he moved back to Logan he became Viator’s mentor.
Hatch, who was raised in the valley, said his discovery of magic has roots in his childhood when his mother got him a book of magic. He put together a show and friends and family encouraged him to continue doing it.
When he was a teenager, his family lived in Germany, where Hatch said he met a mentor who encouraged him to pursue the art by practicing.
When he came back to the U.S., he put his magic aside for a bit, but he picked it up again while he was in graduate school at Yale, studying physics.
“I learned it’s a performing art,” Hatch said. “It’s not enough to do it for yourself in front of a mirror. I learned more in that first performance than in many years of practicing. I learned timing is critical.”
Soon, Hatch said, he began to consider the possibility of making it his career and decided to give it a try.
“My interest in magic overwhelmed my interest in physics,” Hatch said. “I decided I’d rather appear to violate the laws of nature than discover them.”
He said although he’s a magician, he refers to himself as a “deceptionist,” because that is a better description of what he does.
“Often ‘magician’ has a dark overtone,” Hatch said.
This stigma, he said, causes some to avoid magic religiously and others to take him less seriously.
Since his decision to make magic his occupation, he said he has contributed to the world of magic by performing and helping to create magicbookshop.com, a site Hatch said is “the biggest distributor of magic books in the world.”
Upon returning to Logan, he and his wife began the Hatch Academy of Magic and Music, where they both are able to share their passions with students.
“I really like having people experience that cognitive dissonance of seeing something and having no idea how it happened,” Hatch said.
Viator takes private lessons from Hatch. He said the lessons have given him more confidence while performing.
“You’re always going to get on stage and worry that people are going to catch you and figure out the trick,” Viator said. “But he helps me build confidence, and after a show we go over what I need to improve.”
Hatch also began the Cache Valley Conjurers club, with which magicians in the area meet to learn from and help one another. Both Cannon and Viator said this group helps their performances.
“You get to see different points of view on your approach to different tricks,” Viator said of the meetings. “They teach you their tricks, and I’ll teach them mine. It’s also really nice to have a group of friends that you can just hang out with to get your mind off school, homework and whatever else.”
– m.noble@aggiemail.usu.edu